Each December, a group of GBD elves collect employee money and volunteer time to purchase toys for children of Kelly Elementary School.  The stack of donated toys grows over the month of December, and the elves happily deliver them to Kelly School the week before Holiday vacation.  Parents come to the Kelly School Holiday store and choose toys for their children.  This year, 63 families were able to brighten their holiday by providing 169 children with multiple gifts.

GBD has worked with Kelly Elementary School, a community school in SE Portland, for 14 years.  In addition to the yearly toy drive, employees work throughout the year with the Latino Network, and donate money, via a bi-weekly payroll deduction, to the Kelly SUN (Schools Uniting Neighborhoods) Food Pantry. These donations, totaling $10,000 a year or more, buy food for the pantry, which is distributed to the Kelly community in need.  This multi-faceted relationship with Kelly has also lead GBDers to volunteer in other ways throughout the years, including building a community garden shelter and a garden fence, teaching after-school architecture classes, and re-painting the interior of the school.

You can find out more about the growing network of SUN Food Sites in Multnomah county by checking out the Multnomah County Food Access Map.